You are here

Home » Publications » Bookstore » The Parākhyatantra. A Scripture of the Śaiva Siddhānta.

The Parākhyatantra. A Scripture of the Śaiva Siddhānta.

Author:

A critical edition and annotated translation by Dominic Goodall

Publisher:

Institut Français de Pondichéry / Ecole Française d'Extrême-Orient

Year:2015

Pages:

cxxvi, 669 p.

Series:

Collection Indologie nº98

Language:

Sanskrit, English

ISBN:

978-81-8470-118-0

Price:

1500 Rs (65 €)

Remarks:

This is 2015 reprint [1st ed., 2004]

About the book

This volume furnishes one more previously unpublished document of the pre-tenth-century thought-world of the Śaiva Siddhānta, a religion that was spread across and beyond the Indian subcontinent. The Parākhyatantra dates from the period before the appearance of the most significant body of theological exegesis in the history of the school, namely the writings of the tenth-century Kashmirian lineage of Bhaṭṭa Rāmakanṭha II. Only those chapters that deal with doctrine and yoga survive. Those on ritual and other aspects of religious practice have not been transmitted in the unique codex - a beautiful palm-leaf manuscript in minute Nandināgari script. Quotations from the text have been located in later literature, and a fully positive apparatus reports the readings of all sources. A complete English translation - the first to appear of an early Siddhāntatantra - accompanies the Sanskrit text. The annotation draws on parallels with other Saiddhāntika writings, both published and unpublished.